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Description
Zariel Fey is a space drifter, living aboard a rickety old cargo ship. He usually works as a freelance cargo trader, picking up occasional jobs as a bounty hunter on the side. He is a tired, saturnine man, with long years and deep losses having eroded much of the cheer and hope from his personality. At his heart Zariel is a very kind and gentle person; deeply intelligent with a strong conscience; but that heart is well hidden beneath alcohol, apathy and a despairing attitude toward life.
Zariel was not always a drifting vagrant. He was once an earth mage and an archeological runologist; a researcher specialising in discovering, decoding and adapting ancient mage spell runes. Zariel is an earth mage, something which made him exceedingly valuable at excavation sites. He was also very adept at writing rune spells himself. Zariel was considered something of a prodigy in the field of archeological runology, considered an eminent specialist and holding a post as a professor at Bel’Sierra Arcane University at a very young age.
After meeting and marrying Saharah Fey, Zariel resigned from his teaching post and moved to the town of Kinlais to raise their daughter. He continued his research, working from home, visiting the university as a guest presenter and leading archeological teams on excavations every few months. It was on one of these excavations that his idyllic life was torn away.
It was in the far North. A glacier had cracked open, revealing the ruins of an old city. At its core was a structure, covered in archaic runes and obviously designed for an ambitious purpose. Zariel was sent with a team to investigate. After three days of sleepless study, he determined the runes were designed as a teleport. Eager to test the theory, he attempted to send through a spare bag of supplies. It was a mistake which would haunt him for centuries to come. The spell backfired, tearing the structure apart and collapsing the glacier. The rest of his team, safely outside, never knew the reason for the glacier collapse; only that Zariel was still inside. He was presumed dead, and the ruins, now too dangerous to access, were abandoned.
Zariel awoke on hard concrete in a rain which smelled like hot metal. A wretched city of iron and neon greeted him. The people looked like him, but they spoke an unfamiliar language. The stars, on the rare occasions the smog cleared, were nothing like those he’d grown up gazing toward. As days and weeks past with no hope of finding anything familiar, Zariel faced an agonising fact; the runes were indeed a teleport… and he was very, very far from home.
Zariel spent the next decade painstakingly re-creating the rune spell which bought him to this desolate world. It was his hope to teleport back. After years of careful testing and reworking runes carved across the floors and walls of a dingy apartment, he was ready to make his attempt. In a flash of light Zariel left the city of rust and neon behind.
Zariel knew he had failed the moment he opened his eyes. He was lying on sweet scented grass at the edge of an island. ‘Island’ was the best description he could give it, as the land seemed to be floating in space. He was surrounded by an ocean of stars in what seemed to be a perpetual state of twilight. A strange clear light floated low on the horizon, far off in the centre of an enormous ring of similar islands. An archipelago floating in the celestial heavens. Zariel would have been in awe, once. Instead, he broke apart. All his hope, whatever optimism was left in him, had hinged on getting home. He didn’t know how long he spent lying there at the edge of the world. The place had no concept of day or night. Eventually though, the need for food and water overpowered him and he began to explore.
It was during this search for food that Zariel uncovered something remarkable; a space vessel, parked in an open field. It represented one last chance at finding his way home and, however desperate that chance was, he took it. Immediately after boarding, Zariel noticed something strange. The symbols were a language he’d never seen before, yet somehow he understood their meaning. Too dispirited to care how or why, he spent the next few hours testing various controls before finally risking a launch. As the strange archipelago fell away behind him it seemed to vanish until all he could see in its place was a black emptiness; the black hole at the centre of the galaxy, concealing a hidden secret at its heart.
Zariel never returned to his planet. He discovered its location, but the star system was fiercely guarded by the Galactic Alliance, determined to prevent outside influences on a world very close to achieving interstellar travel. Stricken of the hope of of ever returning home, Zariel took on a role as a trader and courier. The same odd power that allowed him to read the language of his ship also gave him the ability to understand almost every spoken language he encountered. He figured it had something to so with the strange, hidden land at the centre of the galaxy. The light at its heart had thrummed with an energy so powerful and pure he could still imagine the tingle of it on his skin. It would be another few decades before he realised that his exposure to that place had also granted him a decidedly unwanted gift - he was unable to age… or to die.
Zariel still flies that same ship, centuries on. He rarely uses his skills as a mage for anything other than keeping the dilapidated old vessel from falling apart. As the centuries stretch longer he grows ever more dispassionate with the universe, unable to die and living with the knowledge that his wife and daughter would be long in their graves. Zariel isn’t sure what keeps him going. It isn’t hope and it’s certainly not optimism. But some part of him still takes each day as it comes… living for those moments where a little light shines through.

Description
Zariel Fey is a space drifter, living aboard a rickety old cargo ship. He usually works as a freelance cargo trader, picking up occasional jobs as a bounty hunter on the side. He is a tired, saturnine man, with long years and deep losses having eroded much of the cheer and hope from his personality. At his heart Zariel is a very kind and gentle person; deeply intelligent with a strong conscience; but that heart is well hidden beneath alcohol, apathy and a despairing attitude toward life.
Zariel was not always a drifting vagrant. He was once an earth mage and an archeological runologist; a researcher specialising in discovering, decoding and adapting ancient mage spell runes. Zariel is an earth mage, something which made him exceedingly valuable at excavation sites. He was also very adept at writing rune spells himself. Zariel was considered something of a prodigy in the field of archeological runology, considered an eminent specialist and holding a post as a professor at Bel’Sierra Arcane University at a very young age.
After meeting and marrying Saharah Fey, Zariel resigned from his teaching post and moved to the town of Kinlais to raise their daughter. He continued his research, working from home, visiting the university as a guest presenter and leading archeological teams on excavations every few months. It was on one of these excavations that his idyllic life was torn away.
It was in the far North. A glacier had cracked open, revealing the ruins of an old city. At its core was a structure, covered in archaic runes and obviously designed for an ambitious purpose. Zariel was sent with a team to investigate. After three days of sleepless study, he determined the runes were designed as a teleport. Eager to test the theory, he attempted to send through a spare bag of supplies. It was a mistake which would haunt him for centuries to come. The spell backfired, tearing the structure apart and collapsing the glacier. The rest of his team, safely outside, never knew the reason for the glacier collapse; only that Zariel was still inside. He was presumed dead, and the ruins, now too dangerous to access, were abandoned.
Zariel awoke on hard concrete in a rain which smelled like hot metal. A wretched city of iron and neon greeted him. The people looked like him, but they spoke an unfamiliar language. The stars, on the rare occasions the smog cleared, were nothing like those he’d grown up gazing toward. As days and weeks past with no hope of finding anything familiar, Zariel faced an agonising fact; the runes were indeed a teleport… and he was very, very far from home.
Zariel spent the next decade painstakingly re-creating the rune spell which bought him to this desolate world. It was his hope to teleport back. After years of careful testing and reworking runes carved across the floors and walls of a dingy apartment, he was ready to make his attempt. In a flash of light Zariel left the city of rust and neon behind.
Zariel knew he had failed the moment he opened his eyes. He was lying on sweet scented grass at the edge of an island. ‘Island’ was the best description he could give it, as the land seemed to be floating in space. He was surrounded by an ocean of stars in what seemed to be a perpetual state of twilight. A strange clear light floated low on the horizon, far off in the centre of an enormous ring of similar islands. An archipelago floating in the celestial heavens. Zariel would have been in awe, once. Instead, he broke apart. All his hope, whatever optimism was left in him, had hinged on getting home. He didn’t know how long he spent lying there at the edge of the world. The place had no concept of day or night. Eventually though, the need for food and water overpowered him and he began to explore.
It was during this search for food that Zariel uncovered something remarkable; a space vessel, parked in an open field. It represented one last chance at finding his way home and, however desperate that chance was, he took it. Immediately after boarding, Zariel noticed something strange. The symbols were a language he’d never seen before, yet somehow he understood their meaning. Too dispirited to care how or why, he spent the next few hours testing various controls before finally risking a launch. As the strange archipelago fell away behind him it seemed to vanish until all he could see in its place was a black emptiness; the black hole at the centre of the galaxy, concealing a hidden secret at its heart.
Zariel never returned to his planet. He discovered its location, but the star system was fiercely guarded by the Galactic Alliance, determined to prevent outside influences on a world very close to achieving interstellar travel. Stricken of the hope of of ever returning home, Zariel took on a role as a trader and courier. The same odd power that allowed him to read the language of his ship also gave him the ability to understand almost every spoken language he encountered. He figured it had something to so with the strange, hidden land at the centre of the galaxy. The light at its heart had thrummed with an energy so powerful and pure he could still imagine the tingle of it on his skin. It would be another few decades before he realised that his exposure to that place had also granted him a decidedly unwanted gift - he was unable to age… or to die.
Zariel still flies that same ship, centuries on. He rarely uses his skills as a mage for anything other than keeping the dilapidated old vessel from falling apart. As the centuries stretch longer he grows ever more dispassionate with the universe, unable to die and living with the knowledge that his wife and daughter would be long in their graves. Zariel isn’t sure what keeps him going. It isn’t hope and it’s certainly not optimism. But some part of him still takes each day as it comes… living for those moments where a little light shines through.